Leah Rabin, wife of PM, 72

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

Sunday November 12 1:46 PM ET

Widow of Assassinated Israeli PM Rabin Dies 

By Megan Goldin

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Leah Rabin, the widow of assassinated Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin who followed her husband by becoming an outspoken
advocate of peace only to see it crumble in her last days, died of cancer
Sunday.

``The government of Israel, the people of Israel and the Jewish people as
a whole, as well as millions in the world, are mourning today the passing
away of Leah Rabin,'' said Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

``Since (Yitzhak Rabin's) assassination five years ago, Leah held the
torch of his legacy and brought his voice loud and clear to us Israelis
and to the whole world,'' Barak said.

He was speaking en route to Washington for talks with President Clinton on
ending six weeks of Israeli-Palestinian violence that so alarmed
Mrs. Rabin that she personally intervened to try to stop it despite her
illness.

It was only after a public appeal by Mrs. Rabin that Barak dropped his
opposition to convening a meeting 10 days ago between former Prime
Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

The talks ended with a truce that failed to take hold. More than 200
people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed in the violence.

Arafat, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Peres for the
1993 Oslo interim peace accords, said he was saddened by the death of
Mrs. Rabin, who was 72.

``God, it is so sad to lose this lady, wife of my partner in making the
peace of the brave. I am really sad,'' Arafat said in Doha, where he was
attending a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Clintons Say They Lost A Dear Friend

In a statement, Clinton said he and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
``have lost a dear friend and the Middle East has lost a friend of peace,
but the work to which she and Yitzhak dedicated their lives must and will
continue.''

The White House said it had not yet decided who would represent the United
States at the funeral. Clinton called Mrs. Rabin a week ago on the
anniversary of her husband's death to wish her well.

Peres, whose relations with Yitzhak Rabin were frequently stormy, said
after Mrs. Rabin's death that ``even in her sorrow, she was undeterred
from following in the great path'' of the assassinated leader.

In Paris, French President Jacques Chirac was quoted by his spokeswoman as
saying: ``She had, until these last days, continued her husband's struggle
for understanding between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.''

Mrs. Rabin had criticized Barak for turning away from the peacemaking
trail blazed by her husband after the prime minister failed to reach a
final peace agreement with Arafat at the Camp David summit hosted by
Clinton last July.

Yitzhak Rabin was shot by ultra-nationalist religious Jew Yigal Amir at a
Tel Aviv peace rally on November 4, 1995. Amir said he killed Rabin to
stop his peace moves with the Palestinians.

Mrs. Rabin had been suffering from lung cancer and receiving treatment for
heart problems.

Dan Oppenheim, a doctor at the Rabin Medical Center near Tel Aviv where
Mrs. Rabin was hospitalized, said her family was with her when she died.

Although Jewish ritual law calls for almost immediate burial after a
death, Israeli government officials said it was likely Mrs. Rabin's
funeral would be held only Wednesday, to give foreign dignitaries the
opportunity to attend.

``In the last few days her condition deteriorated and this morning she
took a turn for the worse and today, at about 13:55 (1155 GMT), Mrs. Rabin
died,'' Oppenheim said.

``Mrs. Rabin was admitted to hospital a week ago due to a heart problem
but her death is a result of the illness that she was suffering from,'' he
said.

No-Nonsense

Like her husband, Mrs. Rabin hailed from the plain-speaking, no-nonsense
generation of Israelis who founded the Jewish state.

Born in Germany in 1928, she moved to the British mandate of Palestine as
a small child. The couple met in 1944 when Yitzhak Rabin was fighting in
the Jewish Palmach underground and they married four years later.

Mrs. Rabin was at the heart of a scandal over an illegal U.S. bank account
that forced her husband's resignation from his previous term as prime
minister in 1977.

It took 15 years for Rabin to return to power at the head of a Labor
government. 



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